Grumpy

I read in OK magazine that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are hands-on parents to their four small children, then later in the article they admitted they're only actually providing four of the twelve hands and that's only between manicures. Anyway, I think we can safely assume that the fragrant Ms Jolie spends considerably less time reaching into a top-loading washer than I do.

I had a call this morning from a girl I know from Leamington Spa who's living in Sydney for three months. Her mother has just gone back to the UK, terrified of flying but more terrified of spending three months without her only grandson, so she'd trekked halfway across the world for the first time ever at the grand age of seventy. Good on her.

Rachel has an adorable ten month-old son who coos and giggles in all the right places and was delighted with a trip to Sydney Aquarium to look at the fishes. She says he's always like that - even-tempered, chilled out. Ella was never coo-ey and delightful, at least, never for a whole morning. She whinged and whined and refused to sleep all day until I was literally in tears waiting for Darren to come home from work. We tried swaddling, we tried controlled crying. She wouldn't have a dummy. In the end I placed an advert in the local newsagent to see whether we could rent-a-local-granny to help us out at weekends but nobody responded, presumably she'd developed a reputation through all the other local kids and their grandchildren had warned them off.

"So what do you think of Sydney?" I asked, aware I'm beginning to sound like one of those Aussies who asks "how do you like it?" the minute the plane's engines stop turning.

"I love it" she replied. "But there are steps everywhere - it's not exactly buggy-friendly"

"Don't you have a car?"

"No, it wasn't worth it for three months"

"How do you do your shopping?" I asked. She rolled her eyes.

"Bit by bit. Whatever I can fit underneath the pushchair. Still, we're in a nice flat, I can't complain. What sort of accomodation did the hospital sort out for you before you came?"

I almost choked on my Starbucks when she asked.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. We saw thirty-one grotty properties in their fifteen minute inspection slots and settled for the one with the least offensive kitchen"

"But it was furnished, right?"

"You're joking! We had a few teatowels, an oven glove and a corkscrew. The rest we bought at garage sales. God, when I think back to the stress of it all and the heat. We really did it hard".

The more I think, the more I realise that most people I know who came to Australia did so with support. Jan's company rented a flat for her and her brother was here already. Since she had Saul, her parents spend four months a year in Sydney and eight in Stockport. Kate came to live with her old friend Paula, Jo and Gordon had Jo's brother already here. We're quite the pioneers when you think about it, which probably explains why we're so knackered all the time.

So we walked around the aquarium, which was dark and full of huge groups of school children. Ella was determined to lose herself amongst them so there's no way I could enjoy the platypus or the Murray cod or the stone-fish. I need eyes in the back of my head.

It's funny how I find children older than Ella incredibly irritating - when she was a baby I thought two year olds were ridiculous with their tantrums and their squealing. But you don't have much choice, your baby turns into one and because you love them you don't feel so irritated when they're being ridiculous so you find yourself irritated by seven year-olds instead, especially the boys, who fling themselves onto the floor in the middle of public spaces and kick their legs like idiots. Does anyone understand boys less than me, I wonder?

Anyway, they might be irritating, but they're not nearly as irritating as their teachers, who completely fail to supervise them because they're busy gawping at the exhibitions. I'm in a stinking mood today - does it show?

nb Doing it hard vt, sticking it out despite difficult conditions, Australian (slang)